SFX: Sound of jazz piano melody. After opening bars,

CYNTHIA hums an accompaniment. Piano fades out leaving

CYNTHIA humming on her own.

CYNTHIA: Good enough to fill any mother's heart with joy.

[Pause]

I mean the bootees, not the song. The bootees I spend my days crocheting … that are lying around here … all over the room. The bootees. Mountains of baby bootees to keep the little feet warm and fill the mothers’ hearts with joy.

[Pause]

On the subject of mothers, we can do without them, don't you think? I mean, they are quite dispensable. Let's face this squarely, without bringing any unnecessary emotions into it. Mothers can be done away with, and I am talking from experience. I never had one. Of course somebody did give birth to me, but I never got to know her. She went to bring up other folks’ children in the white suburbs of Johannesburg, whilst I grew up motherless in the townships. Nothing unusual. I spent all my childhood living with different people who were called aunts, grandmothers and what-have-you. And I managed without a mother, like a thousand others …

[She laughs. It is a hollow laugh - almost as if she is mocking herself]

[Pause]

I wonder what brings him back to mind. I mean, it was long ago. Bra Zet was one of my first cases after I'd joined a welfare society for disabled persons as a young, energetic, committed social worker.

He was born a welfare case, destined to die one. Bra Zet… I used to read about him in Post. Remember the Golden City Post? What a newspaper! Sex, rape, murder, armed robbery, divorce scandals, extortions… Wholesome reading for the whole family.

Bra Zet was a big noise in the gangster circles. At the time I did not know I would have close encounters with him.

He was the terror of the townships. Used to pull real big jobs. He and his gang. I forget what it was called now, but it was none of your small time gangs that pinch pennies from little girls sent to the corner store by their grandmothers.

Then one day it happened. Gang warfare broke out. And he was shot right on the spinal cord, paralysed from the waist down. That's how he became one of my cases.